The Bible and Slavery

In another context, I recently addressed some questions about the Bible and slavery, and I wanted to post those answers here in an article as well.

1. “The Bible is inconsistent with the modern teaching of the Catholic Church in various areas, such as slavery and the death penalty. Therefore Catholicism is internally inconsistent, because it claims that the Bible is the Word of God while at the same time claiming other teachings to be true which contradict it.”

I don’t think that the Bible contradicts modern Catholic teaching, if we understand both properly. Let’s look briefly at the two alleged examples--slavery and the death penalty. Again, though, as I said in my response to earlier drafts, if you want to make an objection like this, you ought to make your case yourself rather than simply hinting at it. To simply say “The Bible contradicts modern Church teaching on slavery” is insufficient as an argument. No evidence is presented. It is merely an assertion. I might just as well respond by simply saying “The Bible does not contradict modern Church teaching on slavery.” If I said that, I would be doing as much as you have done. You have to present your argument clearly and specifically and then show me the specific evidence that supports that argument. Otherwise, you put too much burden on the person responding to you, who could justly simply ignore your un-backed-up assertion. Their only alternative is to do your homework for you by doing all the research and pointing out all the specifics themself.

Nevertheless, let’s look at the claims. We’ll start with slavery. What does the modern Catholic Church say about slavery? Here is the Catechism of the Catholic Church #2414:

The seventh commandment forbids acts or enterprises that for any reason - selfish or ideological, commercial, or totalitarian - lead to the enslavement of human beings, to their being bought, sold and exchanged like merchandise, in disregard for their personal dignity. It is a sin against the dignity of persons and their fundamental rights to reduce them by violence to their productive value or to a source of profit. St. Paul directed a Christian master to treat his Christian slave "no longer as a slave but more than a slave, as a beloved brother, . . . both in the flesh and in the Lord." 

So “slavery,” as condemned by the Catholic Church, is to treat a human being as if they had no human dignity, as if they were simply merchandise, to reduce them by violence to being nothing more than a source of profit.

Does the Bible endorse slavery, defined in this way? No. It repudiates that idea. Let’s look at “slavery” as it exists in the Bible. Some key passages are Exodus 21:2, 16, 20-21, 26-27; 22:1-2; 23:12; 25:39-55; Deuteronomy 15:12-18; 16:11, 15; 23:25-16; Ephesians 6:5-9; 1 Corinthians 7:17-24; Philemon 1. All but the last three here are from the Law of Moses as that law lays out rules relating to slavery.

Here’s my attempt to summarize the picture of “slavery” found in the Law of Moses:

Often a person becomes a “slave” (or “servant”--see my note on terminology further down) by finding himself in a situation where he needs or owes money. A person may offer himself and his labor to another person in order to pay off a debt. A person could also become a slave by being a captive of a just war. Or a thief may be required to work to pay off the debt of what he has stolen. Also, parents are allowed to give their daughter in marriage to a person who has agreed to marry her and treat her as a wife and to receive monetary compensation for doing so. (However, if this happens, she must have full marriage rights. She cannot be given to others for money and required to work as a general servant, and if the person decides not to marry her, he must allow her to be taken back by her family. He might also have arranged for her to marry his son, in which case she must be treated as a daughter. If he won’t do any of these things, she must be released from the contract freely.) If the person who becomes a slave is an Israelite, he can only be a slave for six years. After that, he must be released. (This would apply to female servants as well as male servants.) All debts in general to Israelites are to be canceled every seventh year. If the Israelite male slave is set free before the end of the six years, he can leave with his wife and children if he was already married when he became a slave; but if the master had himself given the servant a wife, so that the wife also belongs to the master as a slave, she is not necessarily let go with her husband. The husband might choose to stay in that case. He might even choose to stay as a permanent slave. It is permissible to buy slaves from non-Israelites, and they can be made permanent servants. However, any slave who runs away from his master is not to be returned to his master (which seems to imply that the benefit of the doubt goes to the slave, that he has run away because he has been mistreated, etc.). Slaves have the right to fair treatment and respect for their rights in general. A slave can be corporally disciplined, but not severely. If any serious or permanent damage is done to a slave, that slave is set free. (Since slaves can simply run away and be free as well, perhaps the “setting free” in this case also implies the canceling of the debt that is being paid off in many cases.) If the master kills his servant, he is to be punished with death, as with other intentional homicides. (However, the homicide must be proven. If a slave dies, but his death is not clearly related to a beating received, the master is not to be blamed.) Slaves are to be allowed to rest on the Sabbath, and to participate in the holidays and festivals of Israel. No one is allowed to kidnap anyone and make him a slave. There has to be a just cause for someone to come to owe their labor to another person.

Sometimes we find words like “buy” and “sell” associated with servanthood in the Law of Moses. We have to be careful to define terms here, for today the use of words like “buy” or “sell” to apply to people and their services has the connotation of treating people like merchandise instead of like people, stripping away all their natural human rights, etc. But this connotation is not present in the biblical use of such language, which merely indicates that monetary transactions are sometimes involved in transferring a person’s service from one “master” to another. If Floyd works for me (say, he is working as a requirement to pay off a debt), and John wants to give me money so that I will assign Floyd to work for him instead, one could say that I have “sold” Floyd to John, but this would not necessarily imply that I have stripped Floyd of his human rights or am treating him as dehumanized property. As I mentioned, and as can be seen from the passages I cited above the Bible is quite clear in its opposition to any “slavery” that dehumanizes persons. Even when master-servant relationships are recognized, there is always an exhortation to remember justice and human dignity in the midst of it, as, for example, in Ephesians 6:5-9:

Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ; not with eyeservice, as menpleasers; but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart; with good will doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men: Knowing that whatsoever good thing any man doeth, the same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bond or free. And, ye masters, do the same things unto them, forbearing threatening: knowing that your Master also is in heaven; neither is there respect of persons with him.

Also, the idea of a particular race being enslaved because that race is inferior is a concept completely alien to the Bible. The concept of an “inferior race” itself is completely foreign to biblical categories. In the Bible, all human beings are said to be descended from Adam and Eve, as well as more recently from Noah, and they are all equal in fundamental worth. In Acts 17:26, St. Paul said that God “hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth.” It is certainly true that certain groups of people, such as the Canaanites and the Amalekites, become particularly wicked and are punished in extraordinary ways; but this has nothing to do with their race but with their wickedness. When Rahab the harlot chose to do the right thing and follow God, she was spared even though she was a Canaanite (Joshua 2:1-21). When Israel became wicked, God threatened to punish them with precisely the same punishments with which he punished the Canaanites. God, through the prophet Amos (in Amos 9:7), said this to Israel during one of their wicked periods:

"Are ye not as children of the Ethiopians unto me, O children of Israel?" saith the Lord. "Have not I brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt? and the Philistines from Caphtor, and the Syrians from Kir?"

In other words, Israel shouldn’t think they are better than others because of something intrinsic to their nature. “If I brought you up from Egypt,” says God, “well, I bring lots of people up from lots of places. So what?” In the context, the point God is making is that they should not expect special treatment merely because they are Israelites.

In the New Testament, in Acts 10:34-35, the Apostle Peter said, “Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons: But in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him.” The Apostle Paul, speaking of the unity that exists in the Christian church, said, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). To the Colossians, he wrote that in Christ “there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all” (Colossians 3:11).

So I see nothing in the biblical teaching regarding slavery that contradicts modern Catholic Church teaching on this subject. The appearance of discrepancy is to a great degree dispelled simply by defining our terms more carefully and not equivocating over the meaning of words like “slavery.” With regard to the general question of the ethicality of slavery in the Bible, we must remember to keep in mind a few things:

We must remember to question our assumptions. This is especially an important thing to remember when we are dealing with moral issues, because moral positions are so often based not on rational evidence but on intuition and feelings, and they tend to be held very strongly and deeply and with great passion and zealousness by people, which makes them easy subjects of prejudice and bias and unquestioned assumptions. It is easy and natural for people, when discussing these sorts of subjects, to cling zealously to assumptions, to resent their being questioned, to get angry when another position is advocated or when objective questions are asked, and to refuse to listen to or think through or be teachable to alternative arguments or points of view. All of this is a great recipe for erroneous thinking based on unwarranted assumptions, so we must be very careful here to balance our passion for justice with an openness to rational inquiry and evidence.

We must be specific, nuanced, and thorough. As we have seen above, it is easy, with issues like this, to oversimplify our evaluation of the issue--such as by declaring the Bible contrary to modern Church ethics simply on the basis of the fact that the word “slavery” is condemned by the Catholic Church but is used in a positive way in some translations of the Bible, without asking more specific questions about the meaning of the word in different instances. Or it is easy--especially when influenced by passion and bias--to read the worst possible meaning into biblical texts rather than trying to give them as much benefit of doubt as is reasonably possible, which must be done if we will avoid question-begging in our argument against the Bible.

We should remember that, although the Bible is the Word of God, and so whatever it approves or advocates is advocated by God, yet sometimes God’s laws for humans are less than ideal. What I mean is that when moral ideas are translated into laws for particular human beings and particular human societies, those laws will be a mix between moral ideals and realistic conditions. Human lawmakers understand this. Sometimes an imperfect or corrupt system is in place that cannot be immediately abolished by legislation. In such a case, laws may be passed to bring conditions as close to the ideal as is reasonably possible. Situations or actions may be regulated without necessarily being approved as ideal. God sometimes does the same thing. Recognizing that they are not always ready to understand a full ideal, he leads his people slowly and gently, guiding them incrementally towards the full ideal. His commands might regulate what, in more ideal conditions, might be entirely abolished. This is true throughout Scripture. It is especially true when we are talking about the Law of Moses, which was an application of the moral law adapted to a particular people at a particular time in particular circumstances, and one of the purposes of which was to lead the people of Israel slowly and gently to a greater recognition of sin, salvation, and moral truths. Jesus himself explicitly acknowledges this about the Law of Moses in reference to divorce (see Matthew 19:3-9). Upon telling the people that divorce is unethical, he is challenged by the Pharisees who point out, rightly, that the Law of Moses permits and regulates divorce in some cases. He responds that Moses allowed this “because of the hardness of your hearts,” even though this was not the ideal from the beginning. Even though divorce is contrary to the ideal of God’s design for marriage, yet the people of Israel weren’t at a point where they could attain that ideal, and so the Law of Moses regulated divorce in non-ideal circumstances, trying to mitigate the harms and bring the situation as close to the ideal as was possible in that time and place. With regard to slavery, this means that we should not necessarily infer that just because God regulates certain relations between masters and servants that that implies that these relations represent what is ideal. In some cases, God may have been leading his people slowly over time to eventually overhaul their understanding of human relations more fundamentally, teaching them values incrementally, in ways that would be effective for them, so that those values would eventually bear fruit in them by bringing their hearts and their societies into conformity with the greater ideal.

So in order to make an argument against the Bible based on the moral issue of slavery, first we have to make sure our understanding of the facts are accurate, thorough, and nuanced, and not biased, incomplete, inaccurate, or oversimplified. Secondly, we have to show how a proper understanding of all the relevant facts leads necessarily to the conclusion that the Bible violates true morality. We will have to show that we know what true morality is, and that we can prove that our ideas about morality are correct without question-begging (such as by assuming Atheist assumptions without argument), and that we can truly and specifically show a contradiction between what is clearly in Scripture and what is clearly taught by the true moral law. This kind of argument is certainly possible, but it is a whole lot harder than most people realize who make attempts at it. Most people are content simply with vague, intuitive, feelings-based, oversimplified generalizations.

For more on biblical slavery, see this fascinating and well-researched article.  For more on the Catholic Church and slavery, see here.

Now what about the death penalty? Much of what I’ve said above in terms of how we should go about evaluating these sorts of questions applies to the death penalty as well as to slavery. Since my answer here is already very long, I will refer you to another article which addresses the death penalty objection. The article can be found here.

2. “In Exodus 21:7-11, the Law of Moses allows parents to sell their daughter into slavery! How in the world could this ever be deemed ethical?! Obviously the Bible promotes moral monstrosities!”

Here is the passage in question:

And if a man sell his daughter to be a maidservant, she shall not go out as the menservants do. If she please not her master, who hath betrothed her to himself, then shall he let her be redeemed: to sell her unto a strange nation he shall have no power, seeing he hath dealt deceitfully with her. And if he have betrothed her unto his son, he shall deal with her after the manner of daughters. If he take him another wife; her food, her raiment, and her duty of marriage, shall he not diminish. And if he do not these three unto her, then shall she go out free without money.

I summarized the basic idea here in my summary of the Law of Moses on slavery in #1 above. I’ll paste the relevant portion here:

Also, parents are allowed to give their daughter in marriage to a person who has agreed to marry her and treat her as a wife and to receive monetary compensation for doing so. (However, if this happens, she must have full marriage rights. She cannot be given to others for money and required to work as a general servant, and if the person decides not to marry her, he must allow her to be taken back by her family. He might also have arranged for her to marry his son, in which case she must be treated as a daughter. If he won’t do any of these things, she must be released from the contract freely.)

What moral objections could be raised against this? Perhaps the objection could be raised that this scenario violates the right of consent the daughter ought to have. The text says nothing about the daughter’s consent. The subject is simply not addressed. So we must be careful not to make unwarranted inferences and read ideas into the text that aren’t there. Does the Bible elsewhere address the question of consent in situations like this? I am not aware of a lot of places where this is addressed, but one passage does come to mind--the story of how Abraham’s servant found a wife for Isaac in Genesis 24. I won’t paste it all here, but go and read through it This is an interesting story in many ways, but one interesting thing about it is that it gives a rare glimpse into how the wife-to-be’s consent was thought of by the people involved in this scenario (see especially v. 8 and v. 57-58). It seems that her consent was considered essential to the whole affair. Does this mean that consent should be assumed in Exodus 21:7-11? The text simply doesn’t tell us. The law as written simply doesn’t address the subject. In Catholic marriage law, the consent of both parties is required for the marriage to be valid. What about Jewish law? Interestingly, it seems that Jewish law in the Talmud (a repository of Jewish traditions of interpretation of biblical law compiled not far from the time of Christ) requires consent for a marriage to be valid as well. (See the Wikipedia article on this.) So why assume that consent would not be a part of the equation in the scenario envisioned in Exodus 21? I am not aware of any good reason to make that assumption.

Perhaps it might be argued that the culture of the Ancient Near East in general treated women in ways that did not grant them the full rights and freedoms they ought to have. In such a context, it might be argued, there is not adequate protection for these rights in the Law of Moses or in biblical revelation in general. There might not be adequate protection for consent, for example, even if it is assumed to be necessary. It is true that in any human society--including both the societies of the Ancient Near East and our own modern American society--there are many imperfections. There is no human society where the full ideals of the moral law are fully lived up to and protected in such a way as to make it impossible for violations of those ideals to happen. I mentioned in my response to #1 above that the Law of Moses sometimes regulates things in the context of less-than-ideal circumstances. Moral violations and crimes happened in ancient Israel, despite God’s moral law and the Law of Moses. As we know from our overall answer to the problem of evil, God allows evils to happen in this world and refrains from always preventing them because he sees it is for the greater overall good. This includes allowing human societies to exhibit the imperfections of the fallen human condition even to the point that no legislation can fully close off all the loopholes clever human sinners can find in order to engage in unethical acts and treat people unjustly. Different societies will be prone to different vices, as they will have different cultural personalities, different levels of knowledge, different moral sensibilities, etc. God, in his infinite wisdom, decides what to allow to happen, what to prevent, what to command, what to permit, what to regulate, what to legislate, what not to legislate, what to suggest or exhort to rather than to command or legislate, etc. Since he is omniscient and omnibenevolent, it makes sense for us to trust his judgment in such matters--that he is running the universe in the best way possible according to what is truly good and important overall.

Perhaps it might be argued that it is inappropriate for the parents to receive money in return for agreeing to allow their daughter to marry the person. Why is this inappropriate? So long as it does not involve the dehumanizing of the daughter or the reducing of her to merchandise, why could not monetary compensation be involved in such an affair--especially if the family is in great need of money? The man who is marrying the daughter is receiving something very valuable, and the family is losing a beloved daughter (in the sense that she will no longer be living at home, etc.). Why should not this transaction involve some compensation? Can a clear, objective case against this be argued? If so, I am not yet able to formulate it. But even if someone believes that this is inappropriate, or at least subject to possible abuse and so a dangerous allowance, we must remember again that these laws are not only applications of pure moral ideals but are also attempts at realistic regulations within the particular circumstances of this particular society. As such, they might regulate a practice that is not ideal but which could not realistically be entirely abolished at that time. The law could mitigate a non-ideal situation in order to move the people of Israel closer to a more adequate manifestation of the greater ideal over time.

If other objections are raised, we must keep in mind the rules of good, thorough, nuanced, and objective reasoning that we’ve outlined and tried to apply above and to remember to try to avoid oversimplification, bias rooted in highly charged emotions, etc.

3. “But all of your reasoning above is simply an attempt to justify the unjustifiable. You seek to whitewash what is plainly unethical by overcomplicating the matter.”

No, that’s not what I’m doing at all. I am pointing out genuine complexities and nuances that are relevant to the evaluation of this issue, particularly as the issue is raised in order to function as an objection to the claim that the Bible is the Word of God.

It is certainly true that one fallacious way of reasoning that people often employ is to whitewash the clear apprehension of truth by means of introducing unnecessary confusion and obscurity. That is something to watch out for. Whether anyone is doing this in any particular case has to be evaluated on the basis of a careful look at the evidence. However, it should also be remembered that there is an opposite fallacy to watch out for as well. People can sometimes try to avoid criticism and questioning of their own views and arguments by portraying the other side’s arguments as “unnecessary and confusing complications,” thus making people ignore important nuances and complexities and instead simply accept a biased and feelings-based assessment of the issue without serious questioning. This is especially effective when an opponent’s argument goes against the grain of common intuitions and prejudices within a certain culture. In such a case, people are already inclined to be suspicious of the argument, and so they are easily led to dismiss it as false without adequate and serious consideration. (And, of course, it should be remembered too that people sometimes resort to these sorts of fallacies without necessarily intending to do so consciously and deceptively. The users of these fallacious ways of reasoning are sometimes the victims of their own fallaciousness. As always, the antidote is to keep practicing the four “skills of the class”: 1. Define terms, and have clear and distinct ideas. 2. Be self-aware and other-aware. 3. Question all assumptions. 4. Have a proper balance between teachability and tenacity of belief.)

For more general apologetics for Christianity, see here, here, and here.

The Problem of Evil

Why the Problem of Evil Is Difficult to Answer

The problem of evil is one of the classic concerns/arguments raised against the existence of God.  "If God is all-powerful and all-good, how could there be evil and suffering in the world?  If God is all-powerful, he can eliminate the evil.  If he is all-good, he would want to.  So there should be no evil."  Personally, I do not find it to be a terribly difficult objection to deal with on an intellectual level, but it is very tough to respond to overall.  I think perhaps that one of the reasons for this is because it strikes hard on the emotional level.  The sufferings caused by the evils in this world are felt very deeply, and evil, as the hymn says, seems "oft so strong."  It is difficult, when one is the midst of experiencing great evil or suffering, to imagine how the allowance of such evils could be justified, or to see how any good could possibly counterbalance them.  Consider a novel as an analogy.  The characters in the novel, while in the midst of the apparent victory of evil (it is typical in a story for the power of evil to reach its greatest height, its victory apparently assured, right before the climactic "eucatastrophe"--as Tolkien called it--where good finally defeats evil), cannot imagine how evil could be defeated and good could possibly win.  (I think of Sam's great speech to this effect in The Two Towers movie.)  The end of the story is very difficult to conceive of from the vantage point of the middle of the story.

Because pain and wickedness are felt deeply, and because of the difficulty of envisioning the end from the middle, it is difficult for people oftentimes to give an unbiased intellectual hearing to answers to the problem of evil.  It feels like a betrayal or a trivialization of the greatness of the pain to hear someone make an argument for how the allowance of such evils in the world could be justified, or how the allowance of evil leads to a greater good.  No matter how intellectually convincing such arguments are, on an intuitive and emotional level, they feel woefully inadequate to the reality.

That is all very understandable, and yet, if we wish to get reality right, we must try to approach even this topic with sound, objective reason.  We must distinguish between what our feelings tell us and the intellectual merits of the arguments.  This is one place where the virtue of faith comes in.  Faith is believing to be true what one has good reason to believe to be true even when the appearances are against it.  I once heard the concept of faith illustrated by means of the idea of an airplane pilot flying through thick clouds.  The pilot's intuition, judging from the appearances out his window, keeps telling him that he is about to crash into a mountain, but his instruments tell him he is nowhere near the mountains and there is no danger on his current trajectory.  The pilot has to suppress his instincts and intuitions and trust his instruments.  (I have no idea if pilots actually experience situations like this, not having any experience with flying anything, but the analogy is still useful either way.)  That is how the virtue of faith works.  Our reason leads us to certain conclusions, and yet our instincts make these conclusions seem false.  We have to trust our reason over our intuitions and over the appearances.  But this can be very difficult, and we must be careful to give ourselves and other people what we and they need at the time.  The existence of evil poses intellectual challenges to the idea of God.  These challenges must be met by rational arguments.  But when people are in the midst of evil, they often need comfort, encouragement, pastoral care, and other kinds of personal and emotional support as much as or more than they need intellectual answers.  We cannot respond to the legitimate intellectual challenges by expressions of emotion or platitudes, nor can we properly comfort and encourage people simply by giving them intellectual answers to arguments.  Both of these have an essential role, but they must recognize their proper place.

A Response to the Problem of Evil

So here is how I think the Christian worldview can provide an intellectually-satisfying answer to the problem of evil:

God is the Supreme Being, the Creator.  He is also the Supreme Good.  He embodies the fullness of being, goodness, knowledge, wisdom, life, happiness, etc.  To know God is to know the fullness of joy and to be completely satisfied.  God himself exists as a Trinity of persons who delight in knowing and loving each other eternally.

God created the world in order to display and share his glorious perfections, to fill up the emptiness of the world with the joy of who he is.  As God's creatures, our ultimate happiness can come only from finally achieving the Beatific Vision - the joy of fully knowing God in eternal life, of which we only have a foretaste in this life.

But to know God fully, and to reach the joy of knowing God fully, one has to understand the nature of what God is not as well as what God is.  God is the fullness of being, life, goodness, wisdom, happiness, etc., so the absence of God, the opposite of God, entails emptiness, death, evil, foolishness, misery, etc.  That is why the opposite of God is hell, and hell is the destiny of beings who intentionally, with full understanding of what they are doing, cut themselves off from God (what Catholics call "mortal sin").  Hell is the natural as well as the just consequence of rejecting and opposing God, of not giving him the love that is due to him or finding our happiness ultimately in him.

In order for God to display and share his supreme goodness in and with the world, he has seen fit to allow evil and suffering to exist in the world.  Only by experiencing and understanding evil and suffering can we truly come to know God fully.  Evil and suffering are hateful to God, and yet he allows them to happen in the world to bring about the greater good of sharing the joy of who he is.  God is all-knowing and all-wise, so he knows what is best, and he only allows evil and suffering in the way and to the degree necessary to bring about the greatest good.  His plan for history, both in terms of the good he brings about and the evils he allows, is best suited to accomplish that greatest good.  The Supreme Good of who God is infinitely outweighs the worst evils that can happen in the universe, for while the evils and sufferings of this world are very great, God is infinitely greater.  We can understand this idea in general and see the reason behind it, but, with our limited knowledge, we rarely understand why God does or allows the particular things he does.  In fact, our own ignorance of the full meaning of what is happening is one of the things God allows in the world as part of his overall good plan.

God is not unjust in allowing the evils and sufferings he does.  None of us deserve any good from God, for everything we have, every aspect of our existence and life, is a free gift from him.  We are nothing in comparison to God or without God.  God is the supreme source of all being and goodness.  These things belong to him and to no one else.  God does not owe it to any being to bring it into existence, or to keep it from falling into evil or suffering when it does exist.  (Once God has freely brought us into existence, it is true that he naturally and justly respects and loves the existing beings he creates.  We are his works, and he owes love to us as such - not as if we own our own existence ultimately, but he loves that which he has freely made.  He loves the happiness of all beings and hates their suffering.  And yet our value as created beings does not give us a right to receive the ultimate goodness and happiness of the divine life.  God does not owe it to us to keep us from falling into sin and suffering.)  And not only that, but we are sinners.  Left to ourselves without his grace (the help that comes to us when God shares with us his own life and power), we inevitably fall into foolishness, weakness, wickedness, and misery.  Our first parents fell into mortal sin against God, and all their descendants come into this world following in their footsteps.  Only God's grace can turn us from mortal sin to supreme love to God.  God sent his Son--the Second Person of the Trinity--into the world in order to share with us his divine life and give us the means of deliverance from evil.  God the Son became a sharer in our humanity, uniting himself to us, so that he could absorb into himself all our emptiness, foolishness, weakness, sinfulness, and misery, sharing with us the fullness of his divine life, wisdom, power, goodness, and joy.  He has thus provided deliverance from our fallen condition, though the process of that deliverance takes place over a lifetime (and sometimes longer) and is usually painful (much like healing from a serious disease in a hospital is often a painful experience, though it leads to the revival of life rather than to death).  Left to ourselves, we are rebels against God and on the path to hell, but God in his grace gives us another path--the path back to him and to happiness.  Regenerated by his grace, in the end we will be full of God's goodness, beauty, and joy, and God will delight in our goodness and beauty as we receive a value infinitely above that which we have as mere creatures.  Thus God is not unjust in allowing the evils to come upon us that he does, and we must remember that he only allows those evils that are best for the overall good.  If we trust him in these things and follow him, though our way may be very painful, in the end it will lead us to what is best.

It also helps to remember that God is not oblivious to or aloof from our suffering.  He sees the bigger picture, but he also sees with absolute clarity all the smaller parts of that bigger picture.  Since he is fully aware of the feelings and experiences of all sentient beings, he experiences infinite empathy.  He is fully blessed and happy because he experiences the overall product of all his works, which is perfectly good and beautiful, but, unlike with us, his awareness of the whole does not cloud his full awareness of all the parts, and so he is fully with us in all our suffering.  This awareness is complemented by the Incarnation.  God became human and so has an added human capacity to empathize with us in our weaknesses and sufferings.  Christ himself took upon himself the full weight of human sin and suffering - and also overcame it through the power of his divine life.

I think the picture of reality described above shows how the existence of evil is not incompatible with the existence of an all-powerful and all-good God, and so answers the problem of evil.  The various points of this picture derive from the existence of the classical theistic God, and so if that God is shown to exist, these points all logically follow, as I have shown here (briefly) and here (more fully).

A Response to a Follow-Up Question

In order to shed further light on the problem of evil, I would like to follow up the above summary with my answer to a specific question regarding biblical morality which was asked of me in a different context.  Below is that question and my response to it.

“What about the killing of infants and animals in the Bible as they are swept up in God’s punishments.  For example, in response to the Amalekites’ attack on Israel a few hundred years earlier, God tells King Saul to wipe out all the Amalekites.  1 Samuel 15:1-3:  ‘Samuel also said unto Saul, "The Lord sent me to anoint thee to be king over his people, over Israel: now therefore hearken thou unto the voice of the words of the Lord. Thus saith the Lord of hosts, 'I remember that which Amalek did to Israel, how he laid wait for him in the way, when he came up from Egypt. Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.’ "' How can this be just?”

It is easier to see why God brings strong punishments on wilful sinners, particularly those who commit mortal sins (which involve a knowing and willing rejection of God as one’s supreme good and a turning away fundamentally from him).  If God is the Supreme Being, he is the Supreme Good, the source of all being and goodness, and so he is supremely valuable (as I argued in my case for the existence of God and my case for Christianity which I wrote up with Robert).  Therefore, rejection of him or opposition to him or contempt for him will be supremely bad and will naturally and justly reap supremely bad consequences (in other words, hell).  It is not surprising, in light of this, that God brings strong penalties on sinners in the Bible.  When God punishes sin, his punishments are not arbitrary.  With God, there is no ultimate distinction between a punishment or a reward and a natural consequence, for nature itself comes from God and his will.  God’s punishments are not arbitrary, but are logical and rational, in accordance with his divine nature and the very nature of reality itself.  He simply allows the sin to reap what it truly and naturally deserves and brings upon itself.  And his punishments are not unjustly harsh.  An Atheist or an Agnostic might see God’s punishments (whether in nature, in Christian theology, or in the Bible) as harsh, but that, I think, is partly owing to their assumption that God doesn’t exist.  If God doesn’t exist, he is of no importance, and so sin against him is no big deal, and so it doesn’t deserve or warrant any serious punishment or consequences.  But if God exists, as I said above, he is supremely important, and so sin against him is supremely serious, and the consequences of sin supremely dire.

But what about when God brings serious negative consequences on those who do not commit mortal sin or are incapable of mortal sin--like infants and animals?  Is this just?  We have to keep in mind that God is the Supreme Being and the Supreme Good.  He possesses all being, goodness, value, and happiness.  They belong to him.  They are a part of his divine life.  No one possesses these things other than him.  Apart from him, they do not exist.  Apart from God, there is only non-being, emptiness, death, evil, and misery, as I argued in my case for Christianity.  If any being who is not God experiences happiness, it is only as an unmerited gift from God.  We have nothing of our own that naturally attains or merits or warrants the happiness that is part of God’s own life.  Everything we have is a gift of God, and what we have as mere creatures is infinitely inferior to God.  Without the unmerited gift of God’s own life (which is what theologians call “grace”), we are doomed to evil and misery.  Although infants and animals are not capable of personal sin, they are part of the created and fallen world.  They do not naturally possess happiness or a right to happiness.  They are naturally prone to suffering.  (As created beings, they have value and we ought to love and respect them, as God does as well, and yet their created value does not give them a right to ultimate happiness or to be kept from falling into the suffering involved in a fallen world.)  When our first parents fell into sin, they brought the whole human race along with them, and, as St. Paul says (Romans 8), the creation itself is subject to the bondage to decay until it shares in the liberation of the children of God which comes through Christ.  Although infants do not commit personal sin, they are fallen creatures who do not deserve happiness, and, not being God, they are naturally subject to evil and misery.  God, for good and just reasons in his overall plan, has allowed the consequences of the Fall of our first parents to come to them and cause them to be born into the world without the grace of what Catholics call “original justice”--that condition in which grace kept our first parents holy and happy before they rejected it.  As a result of this, they share in the misery of their first parents to the extent they are capable of it, even as infants.  But they are also sinners in embryo.  When they grow up and develop the capacity for moral action, they will, without grace, grow up into mortal sinners themselves.  So, being part of fallen humanity, they share in their own way in the lot of fallen humanity.  Their suffering, however, cannot be the same or at the same level with the suffering of those who commit personal mortal sin, for God punishes no one for that which they do not deserve.

In the case of the adult Amalekites in the text, they had not lived at the time the Israelites came out of Egypt, so why are they punished for what their ancestors did?  As with the infants, I don’t think we should think of what happened to them as a “punishment” in the strict sense--as if God were blaming them personally for something they didn’t do.  Rather, he was simply bringing the consequences of their ancestors’ behavior upon them.  These Amalekites were fallen human sinners.  As such, they were already subject to death and the sufferings of this life.  If God, in his providential plan of history, chose to allow that to manifest itself by means of a link between generations--so that one generation reaped the failures of an earlier generation--there is nothing that can be shown to be unjust about that.  It is very similar to the case of the infants mentioned in the previous paragraph, but with the added element that these were adults who were personal sinners themselves.  And there is no evidence that they had repented of their ancestors’ actions or regretted them at all, or had changed in their basic approach to life (attacking innocent people and killing them, etc.).  For this reason as well it was not inappropriate for God to bring upon them the consequences of their ancestors’ sins.  In general, God often allows our actions to affect others and their actions to affect us.  Human beings are often the recipients of the consequences of other human beings’ good or bad actions.  The ultimate examples of this are all of us inheriting original sin from Adam and Eve, and those who are saved receiving the benefits of Christ’s atonement.  But in everyday, ordinary life, we often see less dramatic versions of the same basic principle, especially with parents and children (as children often receive great harm or great good from the actions of their parents).

What about animals?  They, too, are creatures and are part of this fallen world, though, unlike human infants, they are not sinners in embryo.  They will never be capable of moral action.  That capacity is contrary to their nature.  Still, they are not God, and so they do not deserve happiness, and they are justly subject to share in the consequences of being part of a fallen world, though they cannot suffer the same way that those guilty of personal mortal sin can suffer.  If God. for good and just reasons, has chosen to allow them to share in the calamities of being part of our fallen world, we have no basis to declare this to be wrong or unjust.

We can even think of adult humans who committed no personal mortal sin.  Of course, there are not many of those.  We can think of Jesus and Mary.  They could not suffer exactly the same way that those guilty of personal mortal sin can suffer, but they did suffer.  They could suffer because they were human and so were finite creatures, and also because they lived in the context of a fallen world.  (Jesus was, of course, God as well as human, but he was [and is] fully human.  He took upon himself the fullness of our humanity along with its weaknesses and frailties and sufferings, though in him that humanity was united to the divine nature.)  In the case of Jesus and Mary, and indeed any of us fallen sinners who, by grace, have repented and chosen to turn to God, our suffering can take on a voluntary and redemptive quality.  That is, we can willingly accept the suffering God providentially brings into our lives and choose to embrace the good that it leads to for ourselves, for others, and for the glory of God.  Christ voluntarily accepted suffering in order to overcome it and liberate others from sin and its consequences, and we who are in Christ are given the privilege likewise of offering up for the good of others our suffering and the virtues that are involved in suffering in pursuit of God.  God can use our suffering to help others in many ways, and we can be a willing part of that.

A closing note in general on this whole discussion of God’s punishments and negative consequences in Scripture.  When we discuss these things, we must be careful not to give an unbalanced emphasis to some things in the Bible over others.  This is especially something to watch out for when we do not really know the Bible very well.  There are lots of Atheists, I suspect, who know virtually nothing about the Bible except the “harsh” passages Atheists like to throw around.  But anyone who knows the Bible holistically is well aware that to think of the Bible as if it solely consisted of these “harsh” passages is to grossly misrepresent it.  In fact, the emphasis of the Bible, and of the Christian worldview grounded in it, is quite the opposite.  God is love (1 John 4:8).  Love is the chief characteristic of his life.  The members of the Trinity delight in their love for each other.  Love is what created the world, as God chose to let that Trinitarian love overflow into creation.  We are saved by love.  Our salvation from sin and misery has come about because God the Son died on the cross to save us.  He gave his life out of love for us and love for his Father.  God is “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy” (Psalm 103:8).  And when God allows evil and suffering to happen in the world, and when he allows and ordains in his providence that evil reap its just and natural consequences, he is not acting contrary to love, but according to it.  When we love someone or something, we hate that which would destroy or defame what we love and value.  God’s punishment of evil is simply the flip-side of the coin of his love.  (Again, Atheists and some others see God’s punishments as arbitrary and cruel because they do not interpret them in their proper context, taking seriously that God is the Supreme Good so that sin against him is the supreme evil and calamity.)  God only allows evil when he knows it will bring about a greater overall happiness in the ultimate view, as it allows his divine life to be experienced fully and so loved and delighted in to the happiness of all who choose to embrace it.  The Bible is full of beautiful exhortations to love our neighbors, to love our enemies, calls to social justice (think of Jesus and the Old Testament prophets), calls to fairness and equity among all, etc.  Some of the most beautiful passages advocating compassion are in the Law of Moses (Exodus 22:21-25; 23:1-12; Leviticus 19:9-18, for example), and many more in the prophets, in the New Testament, etc.  So let’s remember to keep a balanced view of the whole context of Scripture and the Christian worldview when discussing these matters.

For more general apologetics for Christianity, see here, here, and here.